More photos from the Welcome Function

See below for some more photos from the click06 conference welcome function held on Tuesday 19th September.


Previous welcome function photos

Bus tour of Libraries, Sept 23 - Saturday

click06 conference blog
The investment in new Libraries and their services in the WA - Perth area is nothing less than amazing. The bus tour captured the energy and capital investment made and is an indication of the value placed on promoting a literate community who is provided with wonderful opportunities to love words and enjoy learning.

Stops included the Parlimentary Library, Curtin University, The Gosnells Knowledge Centre, Murdoch TAFE Public Library in Rockingham and finally Stirling Defence Library on Garden Island.

The day was relaxed allowing plenty of time to listen staff discuss the uniquness of each of their Libraries, with time to be gently guided through each building. There was time for talking among the Librarians on the bus and some wonderful questions and sharing of experiences made the day better again.

There was a contented quietness on the journey back to Perth, with a stop in Freo for those who wished to tour independently.

This Librarian was more than fragile by the end of this very last Click06 day. So much to take in, new ideas bubbling in my idea.

I have now spent a few days unwinding and taking the sights of Perth before returning East for work next week.

The conference was a fantastic opportunity, one that I most certainly have enjoyed and made the most of. To everyone involved in the Conference thank you - those who organised and particpanted. It was very good time, and a memorable one.

Clare Steve

Emerging Technologies

Emerging Technologies

I attended the Emerging Technologies session on Friday morning and left feeling energised to implement a number of these techologies at my public library in Victoria. Mary Kajewski's presentation was great covering a wide range of possibilities and how they could practically used in the library setting. This practical information reinforced her message of the need to provide information to our ever changing customer base on the principles of - what they want; when they want if and in the format that they want it. If you are interested in developing relevant communication methods for the future read the paper when it is released on the website.

Katrina Knox
Darebin Libraries (Victoria)

Thank you and farewell

On behalf of the organising committee (the rest of them are watching the Adelaide v Eagles game I suspect) thank you for your feedback placed on the blog. I hope there are many others were also inspired by the conference and are already looking forward to dreaming08.

The organising committee has worked very hard over the last two years to ensure the success of click06 and have become a closeknit team except when Adelaide plays either the Dockers or West Coast Eagles. Then it gets a bit tricky.

On a personal note, I found working on the click06 conference committee to be a great honour and a very rewarding experience with opportunities for personal and professional development and to meet and work with a great group of people. I do have to say the Monday morning 7.30am meetings were a bit hard and that I am very much looking forward to my sleep in this coming Monday!

I would encourage any one to put up their hand to work on a conference committee. Its hard work but immensely worthwhile. Make sure you give it a go one day.

With best wishes for safe travels home and thanks for visiting WA.

Michelle Brennand
Chair, Marketing Committee click06

click06 conference dinner

The click06 conference dinner held at the conference venue, PCEC, was a great success with over 500 delegates attending the event. The night started out with drinks in the foyer, followed by a five course meal in the gala ballroom. Many attendees then danced the night away to music by Darren Reid and the Soul City Groove. Thanks to the click06 social commitee for organising such a fabulous event.

Friday on my mind.

Just a note to say thank you to the organisers of the conference for such an amazing conference. I had a fantastic time and I am now bursting with ideas to take back to my work, best of all, my boss was with me at the conference and we are busting with the same enthusiasm!!

Here is a link to Neil McClelland's Booktrust website. I just had a little poke around and it is as inspiring as the speaker himself. I am an ex-pom (I have the certificate to prove it) and I have to admit one of the most pressing questions I had at question time was - Does Southend United have a "Soccer" Reading ambassador? My Dad has been staying with me this week and the team is all I have heard about when not at the conference. Actually, Southend has been having a pretty good year.

I also really enjoyed yesterday afternoon's presenter, Jason Clarke from Minds at Work. His presentation was amusing, challenging and interesting. I was blown away and I think most of the rest of the auditorium was too.

So that's it. Now to start planning a journey in 2008...

Cathy Kelso
City of Nedlands Library Service, Western Australia.

Dance On!

Dance On!
Last night's gala dinner & DANCE reached a roar early and only accelerated! Good on us all -- I loved every minute and bet the band will be talking about librarians for sometime to come! -- Paula Garrett, Chicago

Emerging Technologies & Service Delivery

Emerging Technologies & Service Delivery
Mary Kajewski took us on a tour of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, pod/vodcasts... with good practical tips as well as examples of these technologies applied in a variety of libraries. Also some further reading leads.

1001 Australian Nights

My Thanks to all those contributors to this blog who have been brave enough to respond to my paper, by posting some of their own stories, and also to all those who have way-layed me in corridors and vendor stands, to tell me their own wee wee's stories.

As a teller of stories, it is perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of my work to see colleagues generating their own stories. The stories published on this blog have touched me, just as my story touched others.

This is a wonderful illustration of the power of stories to connect us as individuals and as communities.
I hope the Library community will continue to join in celebrating our unique stories. Including the wonderfully short story about spilt coffee that appeared in a previous Blog.

Regards
Andy Wright

On blogging - from the new grad...

I've not long left the 2 sessions from Constance on wikis and blogs. Wow!

In the face of all the 'stuff' Constance talked about, the rumours of the death of email may not be so greatly exaggerated. The collaboration theme continues...

Clare

Thursday at Click06

Thursday was the only day that I got to attend the conference - after one very long, full-on day I don't know how other delegates have the stamina to do all three days, plus any tours or satellite events!

The day began with the meet the leaders session, where Alex Byrne (IFLA President) and Dagmar Schmidmaier (ALIA President) each spoke about their organisations, where they stand now and vision for the future, as well as how they came to be in those positions. Both reminded the audience that the real value of getting involved in the activites of your professional organisation is in the participation and knowing that you are making a difference - things like conference discounts and it looking good on your CV are a nice bonus.

After morning tea, I went to sessions on the results of an OPAC transaction log study in Germany, issues surrounding RFID and the Wave Riders HSC support programme being run by a co-op of Sydney libraries. As at first-timer to a really big conference with parallel sessions, I found that all the presentations were too short, particularly the RFID one, so I'll certainly be reading the papers when they are published online. I thought that Australian libraries could take note of the findings from the German study that OR and NOT were used much more when they were presented as radio button options on the catalogue, instead of as a drop-down menu where the other options aren't immediately visible.

After lunch, I was one of the new grads in the wake up session, the coaches gold medal ceremony. We were able to present certificates of recognition and medals to more than a dozen librarians who had been nominated by new grads as great mentors. After hours of preparation and lots of teleconferences it was great that it went so well.

Penny Carnaby was up next was a keynote session, where she took us on a whirlwind journey through NZ's new digital strategy and how recent library developments have made this possible. Talking to other delegates after the session, we agreed that Australia can learn a lot from our library colleagues across the Tasman with the aim of establishing a similar strategy in this country. I then went to a concurrent session on AskNow - I'm an AskNow operator so didn't really learn too much, but the stats and future of the service were definitely food for thought.

After afternoon tea (where I eventually found some food - necessary even after a very nice berry milkshake) I decided to just stay in the one room for the 3 concurrent papers. I heard papers on university library reference and info lit services, SMS reference and print vs electronic reference sources. The latter was definitely food for thought, particularly in light of Dagmar's earlier observation of how library education needs an overhaul to make it relevant to librarianship in the 21st century.

The dinner was great! I had no idea that a bunch (catalogue... whatever the collective nouns for librarians is) of librarians could party so hard! The food was delicious (especially the salmon appetisers... YUM), the lighting was fantastic and Darren Reid and the Soul City Groove had most of us out of our seats and dancing within a couple of numbers. The Social Committee did an awesome job - it was just a shame that we all had to work the following day or we'd have kept going to the wee small hours.

Kylie Smith (State Library of WA)

Print Vs Electronic

Yesterday afternoon I attended a paper delivered by Ann Ritchie and Dr Paul Genoni entitled Print V Electronic Reference Sources: Implications of an Australian Study. The paper was discussing a case study conducted at the Northern Territory Library where they audited the data in their RefTracker reference query database to determine the usage of the print and electronic (including the free web) resources.

There were a couple of points that Paul made at the end of the presentation which I thought were quite interesting:

- Paul seemed to be arguing against the rapid increase of e-resources as a replacement for print.

- He noted that there is a 'generational shift' and a lack of familiarity with print resources by new graduates of LIS.

- He also noted that libraries are good at measuring the quantity of reference enquiries, but we can't easily measure the quality of responses. Our use of electronic reference resources may be increasing, but there was a danger in just measuring the quantity of enquiries rather than also looking at quality. (There was an interesting discussion in question time about this, and whether anecdotal feedback or analysis of responses in a reference database was sufficient to determine the quality of the service being provided.)

I have to admit I am one of those 'young managers' cancelling hardcopy reference resources, and moving us full steam ahead to the electronic. I am one of those reasonably new LIS grads who can remember using the print at some stage, but I have to admit I'm more familiar with the online. The fact of the matter is that in my library if the hardcopy isn't being used I just can't justify keeping it. There was a question at the end of the session which was what could reference staff do to convince their managers that the hardcopy was needed?

The session was a bit of a wake-up call to me. Does anyone else have a manager like me who is moving full steam ahead to electronic? Are we really so unreasonable?

And I would also be interested to hear whether anyone has done any research into the quality of their reference/research service.

Cheers from WA - it's been a great conference so far. Well done to the organising Committee!

Good morning from the new grad....

Good morning all! To the friendly local blogger who recommended Rosso for coffee, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you! Found it this morning on my way to conference - I only wish I had looked harder earlier in the week. In return, can I say if you are ever in the suburb of Kogarah in Sydney, be sure to get your coffee from Kamaiki - terrific Greek cafe with a lot of similarities to Rosso.

I learned yesterday that I can continue to call myself a new grad for 5 years! Thanks to those who organised yesterday's gold medal ceremony recognising coaches and mentors - the value of those we work with is often overlooked in the day to day pressure of the workplace. I started out thinking 'what a shame' that so many of those nominated weren't there in person to receive their medals, but in the end it was quite funny that they weren't - it certainly kept the ceremony light hearted!

I said I would talk about colour and atmosphere at Click06 - allow me to digress a little and describe the city streets this morning. They are full of people in business suits wearing footy scarves. Seriously. With both the Dockers and the Eagles playing finals this weekend - footy fever has reached quite a scary pitch here - it's almost like being in Melbourne. I caught a bus yesterday that had blue and yellow streamers tied to every handrail in the bus - I dread to think what all the sweaty hands had done to those by the end of peak half-hour. Being a Swans supporter myself, I think tonight might be a good time to get on a plane and head out of the West....

Ciao

Clare

1001 Australian Nights / Andrew Wright

Story, narrative, discourse, world-view ... were words conjured up before me when I sighted Andrew's topic. My curiosity was aroused as to how spinning tales can aid and abet one's professional undertakings as a librarian. From Fanon's lament of being possessed by another's language (read "story") in the sixties to the present cacophony of post-colonial literature, feminist writings of herstory and postmodern critical theory, it sometimes seems as though marginalised groups have seized back their space (read "centre"). But the dominant discourse is predominant not from want of nothing. Adept at accommodating to changing circumstances, such voices, no longer silenced, are heard but rarely heeded as they pan out as ritualised steam-letting within the larger social context.
Political maelstrom aside however, I agree the librarian should be all things to all people. Whether as story-teller, story told to or from, for or against, reasonable or absurd, we are all the authors of our fate as we make sense of our idiosyncratic sojourn and place in the world.

Sai-Kee Kek (SLWA)

Friday at the National Library Stand

10.30 am Explore Libraries Australia during the Morning Tea Break

1 pm Find out about using Libraries Australia for Reference and Acquisitions

click06 conference blog

OPAC Seminar:
The ACOC Seminar Monday 18th Sept.- Beyond the OPAC- was verry interesting. I came away buoyed by the program and as a cataloguer, more enthusiastic (is that possible?) about making access to catalogue data easier. I think, but most libraries are struggling to achieve the "now" let alone plan the future of OPACs . Presentations on the new bib. standards (FRBR and RDA) were the main threads that interested me, but Patricia Scott and Helen Attar showed us how useful linking beteen analyticals and the parent documents on an OPAC could be set up- a great enhancement. I can't wait to see how Lloyd Sokvitne's new OPAC turns out. NLA's seeding search engines (Google & Yahoo) sounds great. I wasn't aware that this had to be done for bib recs. to be pulled up on a Google as I've found some of SLWA's on my searches. -- I'm looking over past documents of Martha's on FRBRization and feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of change we are looking at and the amazing ways the OPACs in future can be really workable and productive. I'd like to hear what others thought about it.

John Draffin SLWA

From the new grad...

What fun!

I admire Cathy's discipline, in being able to stay with the one stream of concurrent sessions - it would certainly be less exhausting! However, I comfort myself with the knowledge that I am perhaps going someway towards walking off the lovely cakes from the coffee shop at the Convention Centre.

Dear reader, I am incapable of sitting in one concurrent session - each time there are 4 or 5 sessions I would like to attend, do you think the Committee would consider re-staging the conference next week so we could sit in on the papers we had to choose to miss this week? I am like a child in a lolly shop, a fly in a bottle, a mother let loose from the kids for a week (did I really say that?). I too am prowling the exhibition gathering goodies for the young ones back home - although I still haven't managed to find anyone with a writing pad to use during conference sessions (you will recall I didn't get the glamorous Click06 bag that possibly had writing paper in it...?). Today I am heading straight for the Dreaming08 stand, as they have promised me stickers for my leftover-plain-black-look-everyone-she-must-have-registered-late bag!

To all you WA people, thank you for making me feel so welcome - Perth is a lovely spot, everyone is so friendly, everything is so close (although everything does shut at 6pm, what's that about?) and I just loooooooooooooove the free buses.


Clare

More images of Librarians on TV

Have been thinking about Grant Stone's presentation and am racking my brain for more depictions of Librarians (and other library staff) in film and TV.

I've come up with:

1. Giles (the watcher) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
2. Mr Bookman (the Library Investigations Officer [or book detective]) from Seinfeld
3. the female Library Assistant (who Kramer gets to know in the library after hours)
and let's not forget
4. Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) - from the 1960's Batman TV series

Inspired, excited, exhausted.

I've just reviewed my notes from today's sessions - what a fantastic first day.

After the official opening ceremony Josephine Bryant, City Librarian from the Toronto Public Library, gave a thrilling talk on the amalgamation process that took seven seperate public library systems and created a super library system of 99 branches for the people of Toronto. An inspiring presentation with plenty of ideas we could apply here in our public libraries. I love the idea of the Booklovers Ball.

After a magnificent morning tea in the trade hall I attended stream two of the concurrent sessions which included:
Not the "R" word! presented by Kathryn Pearson and Meredith Martinelli - an interesting presentation on the organisational restructure at Macquarie University Library.
Then Robyn Benjamin talked about the restructure of the Technical Services Department at the University of Western Sydney (UWS).
Leanne Levinge and Karen Tang gave a great presentation about Quality Assurance QA and leadership to finish of this concurrent session.

Lunch was delicious! I sat with a Victorian visitor whilst I ate and discussed some of the "must see" sightseeing in Perth.
I also had a good chance to have a look around the trade exhibit. I have some great stash - my family were mightily impressed with the flashing dice from Thompson Gale.

Grant Stone gave a great wake up session on Laughter Yoga ("ho, ho ha, ha, ha!") and the image of librarians in movies and TV. Then Dr Dawn Casey gave a facinating insight into the world behind the scenes at the museum. I don't know why it never occured to me that have museums deal with controversy as libraries do. Her tips on dealing with contoversy were very well observed.
Before we stopped for Afternoon tea, Dr Casey launched the National and State Libraries Australian Indigenous Policy.

I then attended the first stream of the afternoon concurrent sessions which included: Librarians as learning advocates presented by Chris Kelly from Hume Global Learning Village; a fantastic partnership of learning providers, librarians and government to provide education services for the residents of the City of Hume.
Helen Partridge presented an interesting paper on the "digital divide", Understanding digital inequality in the smart city: a psychological model. Helen's challenge to the group, are we designing our digital services so that we are encouraging use, certainly gave me something to consider when I return to my regular job.
Unfortunately I have a bit of a cold and was unable to stay for the last session From stand alone to SWIFT, which I am sure would have been very interesting. And worst of all, leaving early meant I missed happy hour!
It was great to catch up with some old friends and collegues during the day's breaks. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.

Cathy Kelso
City of Nedlands Library Service, Western Australia.

My week in Perth … so far!

Coming from the other end of this wonderful country, I’ve been one of the early risers everyday this week! I arrived late on Sunday night, only to wake on Monday at 5 am!

My fellow Tasmanian colleague and I took an early morning stroll around the city on the way to our respective workshops.

I spent an interesting day at the ACOC workshop, where we looked at the future directions OPACs are taking, managing that change and learnt about some new expressions for me – RDA and FRBRisation!

Tuesday morning I had been nominated to attend the NCIP workshop. I thought a lot of it would go over my head, but John Bodfish did a good job of demystifying the jargon. The NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol will be a great tool for the automation of many routine tasks, although implementation still sounds challenging.

I am staying in Mounts Bay Road, so after lunch did the obligatory trip up Jacob’s Ladder and long walk around King’s Park and the Botanic Gardens. It certainly is a beautiful place!

I then visited the National Native Title Tribunal for a tour of their library and a talk by Rod Stroud from AIATSIS.

Tuesday night was enjoyable. First the Welcome reception – catching up with people I knew and meeting others. Then I went to the AGIA dinner with a bunch of BHP Billiton librarians and met the inimitable Dr Click (but I didn’t know that then!).

Another early morning on Wednesday! First I caught a bit of the Steve Irwin memorial before going to the Virgin’s breakfast, where I met lots more interesting people!

I loved the Welcome to Country from Mort Hanson, especially poignant given yesterday’s Federal Court decision to grant native title over Perth to the Nyoongar people.

I won’t go into detail of all the keynote and other papers presented today, but just comment it was a busy and stimulating day.

See you tomorrow!
Sandy

1001 Australian Nights

I am very excited to be attending the ALIA Library Click 06 Conference in Perth. I once worked in Perth as a Youth Services Librarian and in this role established a new career and enjoyed myself enormously. As part of the Wednesday program of the Conference I was fortunate enough to listen to Andy Wright's presentation "1001 Australian nights: the importance of librarians telling their own story".

The story began with his grandmother - a wrinkly who was a wrinkly and could read. I smiled immediately, the fondest memories I have of beginning reading are sitting on my grandmother's lap and listening intently to her stories, ones she would read and ones she would talk to me gently and slowly about. Just lovely.

Andy then lead the story gently towards libraries and his first visit to a new local library. Certainly a memorable visit. Any my own visits to Libraries are part of my memories growing up, growing in knowledge and loving life. As a Youth Services Librarian I realised as I was listening that sharing my love for children's literature, especially reading aloud to children as part of story telling was not only a favourite part of my work but also an act which fostered this love in others around me.

A random act of kindness, which sometimes I think is not significant, is really what I believe and hope makes a difference to the people I work and interact with in the context of Libraries and life. It is for me as a Librarian now working in a different state, with adults in an academic / government environment is very different but still provides an opportunity to influence the way in which people utilise the Library. Collecting that very large pile of books on the essay question due the very next day for a panic stricken student is always rewarding. Searching the database for that unique piece of information that will make research stand out, and even finding the right book on the shelf at the right time is rewarding. Knowing my collection, waltzing through the Library shelves sharing the collection hot spots with an eager reader are acts that delight me and hopefully make a difference to the poeple with whom I work. This for me is a small way in which I can influence the way in which people learn and enjoy libraries.

The walls of my Library do not contain me. In fact, when I first began in this very different workplace, I thought the Library to be far too quiet. So telling and listening outside the walls of my Library became part of my everyday. As Andy encouraged all Librarian to do, I began connecting with diverse people. I indulged in the art of conversation. I joined colleagues at morning tea and developed an understanding of what they do in the context of their individual work areas. I attended lectures from students who have researched their information in the Library and I listen avidly to guest presenters visiting from interstate and overseas. I take a risk and share my personality, I share my ideas and I listen to others. This I have found to be an instrinsic part of my role.

Interestingly, Andy mentioned the way in which people just don't do what you tell them. However it constantly surprises me after holding a Library Orienation, something I love to do, that people have listened. They have used the prompts provideed and spread their wings and utilised available resources they may not have noticed before. Often the Library is revisted and more questions asked and of course, the support in reaching information literacy independence is always available.

So as stories are a springboard, I am inspired to blog, to share my story. And feel heartfelt that stories help balance life. Andy concluded by saying Librarianship is a noble profession in which you can change lives. Be proud. Librarianship has certainly changed my life. I am content, I enjoy my work and realise the opportunity I have to make a difference to others, even if in a small way is significant.

A view from the Exhibition

This is probably my 25th library conference of one kind or another, but it's the first time I haven't attended as a delegate. This time I'm with the trade exhibitors, working on the ALIA stand. It's more different than I could have imagined. First of all - my feet hurt from standing, secondly - my face hurts from smiling!
The actual conference is happening somewhere off stage and we're aware of it only from the ebbs and flows of delegates. When the sessions finish, we're swamped and when they resume, we're abandoned.
Part of my job on the ALIA stand is to offer copyright advice, but so far no one has asked me - they are either all very copyright aware or they don't know I'm here - must try to market myself somehow. As I visit the other trade stands and introduce myself, I do get some interest, particularly from the publishers, so I don't think my time is wasted.
More later...

Moyra
ALIA Copyright Adviser

First-timer's breakfast

The First-timer's breakfast was held on the Wednesday morning at the conference venue and it was an excellent opportunity network and meet colleagues and make new friends.

The breakfast was sponsored by the State Library of New South Wales who gave away a number of fantastic door prizes including a print and some bottles of West Australian wines.

Photos of breakfast attendees below: